The invention concerns a conveyor arrangement for shock-sensitive products, such as eggs or the like, and includes a conveyor apparatus for conveying the products, an intermediate storage region which is adapted to receive products temporarily by virtue of discontinuous feed or discharge, and a control device for increasing the discharge and/or for reducing the feed of products into the intermediate storage region of the conveyor apparatus when a predetermined critical number of products is exceeded in the intermediate storage region.
Conveyor arrangements are generally used for transporting eggs away from a laying area and feeding them to a packaging station. That purpose is served by using particular conveyor arrangements which include a transverse conveyor belt which conveys products to a processing station and a plurality of longitudinal conveyor belts which are so arranged that they convey products from various, mutually spaced locations onto the transverse conveyor belt. In such devices, the longitudinal conveyor belts extend along a row of henhouses or aviaries and are generally provided individually for each level or tier. The transverse conveyor belts are typically mounted at a right angle to the longitudinal conveyor belts which are disposed in a parallel relationship, and receive the eggs which are transported by the longitudinal conveyor belts out of the laying areas.
A first problem arising with such prior conveyor arrangements is that conveyance of the eggs on the longitudinal conveyor belts, which extends over a period of time, causes the feed of the eggs by way of the transverse conveyor belt to the processing station to be discontinuous, and in an amount which is insufficient to make full use of the processing capacity of the processing station. To avoid this problem, it is known for a plurality of longitudinal conveyor belts to be simultaneously activated to supply the transverse conveyor belt with an adequate amount of eggs. A problem with that procedure, however, is that the spaced points of entry of the longitudinal conveyor belts mean that the transverse conveyor belt cannot be filled uniformly, and the transverse conveyor belt capacities are exceeded locally, which usually leads to damage to the eggs.
A further problem with such prior conveyor arrangements is that only low egg conveyor rates are achieved at both the beginning of the conveyor cycle or operation, and at the end of the cycle, since an excessively low level of supply to the transverse conveyor belt occurs by virtue of starting up the first longitudinal conveyor belt and allowing the last longitudinal conveyor belt to run down. That increases or prolongs the processing time at the processing station, which is disadvantageous for cost reasons.
Particularly in relatively large henhouse installations, it is often desirable for the eggs to be collected in batches or groups from given locations, for example because certain henhouses involve the administration of a different feed from other henhouses, and the eggs produced in that way are to be supplied as an interrelated assembly to the processing station in order to be jointly processed, for example packaged. It is in precisely such situations where the egg collecting operation, with for example up to 15 different groups, takes place in succession. However, it is not possible to achieve full utilization of the processing capacity of the processing station at all times with the previously known measures of simultaneously switching on different longitudinal conveyor belts so that, in such situations of use, considerably longer operating times in the processing station and consequently longer collecting times and higher operating costs have to be tolerated.
A further problem with such prior conveyor arrangements involves in particular keeping laying hens in an aviary in animal-friendly conditions. In such a situation, the animals are provided with a nest in which the animals preferably lay their eggs. The eggs roll onto the longitudinal conveyor belt from the nest. However, the locally concentrated accumulation of the laid eggs results in overfilling of the longitudinal conveyor belt in the nest region, and that can lead to damage to the eggs. In contrast, keeping the hens in cages leads to the laid eggs being distributed over the entire cage width, and consequently, one-off or sequential activation of the longitudinal conveyor belts per day would be sufficient to collect the laid eggs, it being necessary when keeping the birds in animal-friendly aviaries for the collecting operation to be carried out a number of times daily by virtue of local overfilling of the longitudinal conveyor belts.
Yet a further problem with such prior conveyor arrangements is that a build-up can occur due to congestion or processing problems upstream of or in the processing station, and as a result, high damaging forces can act on the eggs. To avoid that problem, it is known to provide a limit switch which is actuated by the egg collection, and which switches off the transverse conveyor belt when an inadmissibly high force occurs. However, from the point of view of utilizing the full capacity of the processing station, a certain build-up or accumulation upstream of the processing station is desired as a buffer, switching off the transverse conveyor belt in that way results in the transverse conveyor belt being very frequently switched on and off, and that can cause increased wear and premature failure.
Finally, a further problem with known conveyor apparatuses is that, when supplying products from a plurality of conveyor belts to a common collecting conveyor belt, damage to the products often occurs if the additionally supplied products first have to displace the products which are already on the collecting conveyor belt, and in that case, unacceptably high forces are operative between the products. To avoid such damage, it is known to provide product guide devices which are stationarily fixed in position relative to the movement of the collecting conveyor belt, and which guide the products already on the collecting conveyor belt upstream of the entry regions of further products in such a way that they are guided away from the entry region and space is thus made available for the products which are additionally arriving. Those product guide devices have to be regularly repositioned and set to accommodate changing delivery conditions, either due to delivery from different delivery conveyor belts or due to varying delivery conveyor quotas, and that makes handling thereof more difficult.